The present invention relates to a device for irrigating the intestine that can be employed during surgery. An obstruction of the intestine, called an intestinal occlusion or ileus, can result either from functional disruptions of intestinal motility not due to any anatomical obstacle or from mechanical disruptions.
Free passage through the intestine can in the case of mechanical obstructions be restored only by surgery. In colonic ileus, which is frequently caused by a stenosing carcinoma, the acute process is usually preceded by several days of constipation. As the contents of the intestine continue to back up in the colon as a whole and in the small intestine as well, the patients develop symptoms of illness that in certain situations require emergency surgical intervention with very little warning. The usual preliminary several days' flushing and relief of the digestive tract to minimize as much as possible the invasion of germs from the thickly colonized intestinal lumen into the abdominal cavity during the operation is impossible in such an emergency.
Subject to the conditions of emergency resection of tumorous or otherwise stenosing sections of the intestine, attempts have previously been made, in cases wherein no fistula is created to relieve the intestine, to suction out the contents with intestinal aspirators inserted into the intestinal lumen. This method, however, does not satisfactorily flush out the intestine. Furthermore, previous tests of oral-to-aboral irrigation during surgery have exhibited no advantages due to the difficulty of removing the resulting waste liquid from the abdominal regions at risk.